Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right, a special commission decided Tuesday as it picked a replacement for an older design that many Native Americans considered offensive.
The State Emblems Redesign Commission chose the final version on an 11-1 vote after finalizing a new state seal that depicts a loon, the state bird. Unless the Legislature rejects them, the new flag and seal will automatically become official April 1, 2024, when Minnesota observes Statehood Day.
The star echoes Minnesota’s state motto of “Star of the North.” The commission’s chairman, Luis Fitch, said that to him, the light blue represents the Mississippi River, “the most important river in the United States,” pointing to the North Star. But he acknowledged it could mean other things to other people. Symmetry and simplicity won out over other versions, including ones that included a green stripe for the state’s agricultural heritage.
Native American on horseback.
How is that racist? Native americans are a big part of the state’s history
It’s a depiction (celebratory?) of them being purposely driven away from the land. The Native American is fleeing.
Wow. I saw it as the two people sharing the land. I did not see it as fleeing. Still a terrible flag, and even more so if it can be interpreted so differently.
Honestly? Even if it was unequivocally that it would still be a problem. The whitewashing of using violence to drive people from their homes and then pretending that they came to an agreement to share the land is just gross.
What if i see the indian circiling in for the kill?
Are we still using that word or did we figure that part out already?
i went to elementry school on a reservation, indian reservation was the parlance of the time. Kinda stuck with me.
Maybe time to leave that in your past. Around these parts that’s not a word folks are fond of.
Many Native American people prefer the term “American Indians”, to be fair. There is a bit of a split on which one is preferrable depending on who you ask. It varies from tribe to tribe, region to region, and with age differences.
Most Native people would just prefer to be called by their tribal affiliation over either of the terms, but accept them as our collective terms for them. Many don’t care which one you use because it’s wrong either way, really.
This is just from my experience talking with some people from different tribes in my area, and from seeing the question posted on forums before.
That’s true. But I was thinking the motif might be from before all that.
There really isn’t any “before all that” though. Especially that far west. Along the east coast there might have been a generation of “we just want to escape weligious pewsecution and gwow cown uwu 👉👈🥺” but the first permanent settlement in Minnesota was in 1852, 7 years after the phrase “manifest destiny” was coined. Minnesota was established during the era where the prevailing belief of white Americans was that God commanded them to take all of America for themselves and anyone who tried to stop them was to be destroyed.
Oh, shit. I don’t have that detailed knowledge of US history. 1852. That’s almost 100 years after its founding, right? I had no clue it took that long to spread west.
yeah, the 13 east coast colonies officially broke from britain in the late 1700s, but the expansion of european settler-colonists into what we now know as the USA took a lot longer to shake out. Arizona didn’t get added as a state until 1912. Alaska and Hawaii didn’t get added until 1959 but they feel like exceptions to the general narrative of “european settlers land on the east coast and push west” that the contiguous states experienced.
Just two friends hanging out with their spear and their rifle respectively at hand
The rifle is just chilling. The dude’s plowing.
Well that, unfortunately i guess is also a part of their history
Yes, but a flag is not the place to tell history. It usually depicts your ideals.
If Germany had f.ex. a shattered David’s Star on their flag, that would accurately depict history. But it would read as antagonism and a current stance on things. As if it was their goal to destroy Jewish people.
It has to do with the setting. It’s not just a Native American riding away on horse back, but the fact that the settler is watching him with his rifle near by. It is like he is driving him away and claiming the land for his own.
You’re overinterpreting things. And despite that, it’s exactly what happened. Historical accuracy is not racism.
Historical accuracy is not racism. Choosing to identify yourself based on the racist actions in your history is.
To drive it to the extreme, it would be like saying that Germany depicting Jews being gassed on their new flag isn’t racist, just historically accurate.